Oral Fixation: One Fish, Two Fish, Bad Fish, Good Fish

A perfectly prepared piece of fish is a beautiful and deeply satisfying thing. Proof of this can be found in iCi’s sautéed skate, an exquisitely simple preparation of a good-sized skate wing, browned in butter and perfectly dressed with the lightest touch of lemon and herbs.

Fish-induced reverie, however, can come to a screeching halt when diners begin to think about what’s on their plate instead of how pleasurable it is to eat it.

Oral Fixation has come under the spell of iCi’s skate many a time, only recently to discover that the way that wing got to my plate is far less appetizing than the thing itself: bottom trawlers drag huge nets along the seafloor, causing considerable structural damage and retaining a large amount of bycatch — other species of sea creatures that are then discarded.

For this, and for the fact that many species of skate (we were unable to determine if the iCi species was among them) are severely overfished, skate is rated “avoid” on the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch list.

In Fort Greene and Clinton Hill, restaurants with varying levels of commitment to local/seasonal/sustainable culinary practice serve fish that appear all over the sustainability spectrum. No. 7 serves wild striped bass, a Seafood Watch “best choice,” but also fluke sashimi, which, depending on the species, is likely a flatfish in serious population decline because of overfishing.

But No. 7 doesn’t have an outspoken public commitment to sustainability, so does that get them off the hook, so to speak? Stonehome Wine Bar’s menu proclaims that all their seafood is from sustainable sources, and indeed, the only fish they currently offer is that same wild striped bass and the small clams called cockles that also, when farmed, are rated a best choice.

The recently opened Roman’s is part of the Marlow & Sons group, known for its emphasis on local and seasonal ingredients. But at our inaugural visit, Oral Fixation (then much less educated about the issue) greatly enjoyed their preparation of monkfish, a severely overfished species rated “avoid.” The monkfish may have been local, but that was no reason to congratulate ourselves for ordering it.

What, then, of the poor skate that has been on the menu of iCi for years? The restaurant, one of the longest-standing date-night places in the neighborhood, proudly announces its commitment to cuisine that is “fresh, seasonal, and local,” and the Web site states that they are “trying very hard to be socially and environmentally correct.” Chef Emily Sims told us that the skate comes from Long Island, which is perhaps the closest place to find high-quality fish.

But Sheila Bowman, senior outreach manager at Seafood Watch, has seen this predicament before. “A lot of people say, ‘For me, sustainable is supporting local businesses’ — they’re looking to sustain something, but it’s not the fish in the ocean,” she explained.

It’s a Jekyll-and-Hyde conundrum: the worrisome damage of the skate fishing on one side, and the relatively small distance and support of local economies on the other. (Ironically, according to Bowman, some skate species are currently experiencing a population explosion because we’ve fished and eaten all their predators.)

So how is the average fish-eater or -cooker supposed to know what’s good and what’s not?

Institutions like Long Island’s Blue Ocean Institute and Seafood Watch have developed substantive education programs that seek to communicate with both diners and chefs. They evaluate elements like species’ population numbers, habitat and farming/catching methods to determine where on the scale of dastardliness a given fish will fall.

Blue Ocean also has a text messaging service, Fishphone that, at the touch of “Send,” will share the status of that tempting filet and recommend a substitute if the fish of your inquiry isn’t a good choice. There are analog outreach efforts, too: both groups publish wallet-sized guides. (In Fort Greene, there’s a pile of Seafood Watch pocket guides on top of the Greene Grape Provisions fish case.)

Restaurant patrons and chefs wield great, and largely unrealized, power in the fight to raise fish awareness to the level that cage-free poultry, or locally and organically farmed produce, have already reached. “We have peaches with resumes,” Ms. Bowman said, “but there’s a basic lack of consciousness” about sustainable seafood in too many restaurants.

One thing she recommended is that chefs who are consciously selecting their seafood make sure to communicate it to their diners, a la Stonehome. Dan DeMarti, proprietor of Olea, switched out salmon on his menu for farmed Arctic char , and added Spanish mackerel, precisely because they are rated best choices.

Ms. Bowman wishes that chefs like Mr. DeMarti would briefly note such choices on the menu or elsewhere. Seafood Watch also offers a free toolkit for restaurateurs that helps them put best practices in place.

In the meantime, Oral Fixation was devastated at the thought of a life without iCi’s skate preparation, and not ready to give it up. Could we keep all the best parts of it — the crispy, browned edges and the buttery interior softness — but prepare it with a less noxiously harvested seafood? At the suggestion of Seafood Watch, and with the concurrence of both iCi’s chef, Ms. Sims, and a blessing from Times seafood god Mark Bittman, we selected farmed bay scallops.

“They would still be yummy with the butter and lemon sauce,” Ms. Sims acknowledged, “but they would not be as awesome as skate.” This is almost certainly true, but Oral Fixation is willing to make that sacrifice in an effort to be as respectful in our selection of fish as we are with produce, poultry and a host of other items.

Ms. Sims seemed prepared to make the leap, too: “If we are going to eat sustainably, that means not being able to eat whatever we want whenever we want it,” she said. “If we are willing to accept that there are no tomatoes in January, then a life without skate fish is not so hard to imagine.”

Pat the scallops dry with paper towels, and season on both sides with salt and pepper. Coat the bottom of a large sauté pan with clarified butter. Place the pans over a medium-high flame and heat until butter is nearly smoking. Immediately reduce heat to medium and add a little more clarified butter to each pan.

Carefully place scallops in hot pan, ensuring that they are not touching, and cook until deeply brown on one side, 1-3 minutes depending on size and thickness, basting with butter the whole time.

Carefully flip the scallops and allow to brown slightly on the other side. Remove scallops from pan and keep warm.

Add lemon juice and stock to pan and use spoon to scrape browned bits off bottom. Vigorously swirl pan for about 30 seconds.

Add herbs and a tiny pinch of salt and swirl some more, then turn off heat. Immediately pour as much pan sauce as you like on top of scallops, and enjoy.

There’s also a Seafood Watch app for the iPhone users out there. Anyone interested in learning more is invited to visit Teach a Man to Fish – my sustainable seafood recipe and resource roundup. I also host workshops for chefs, Teach a chef to Fish precisely for the reasons stated here, in this excellent article.

Another reason to 86 the skate: many times the fish are caught, “wings” or fins are hacked off and the fish are thrown back live, to die a horrible death. No one would eat a steak if the cow were cut up live then left to bleed to death on pasture.

The skate fish was on the menu for years and and had taken off 1.5 years ago when I discover that it was on the list of the fish to be avoid.
We ran that dish again recently as a special during 4 weeks, per request from some of our regular costumers and after checking with our fish supplier the way they were actually catching it (Pierless who is one of the few fish compagny to have their own boats out in Long Island).
There is really little fish, meat you can eat nowdays that is not on a black-list.
I do firmly beleive that we can improve and save what is left to be saved on this planet by eating more responsibly and that is iCi’s committment.
We work with small local farms, we serve cappucinos made with organic milk from the farm to our restaurant in less than 4 days, we support green initiative in the neighborhood and we donate a lot of time, energy and food to support charities who support our beliefs.

And we are not perfect.
Not trying to be.
But I certainly am making every possible efforts to run a business in this economy and at the same time to be respectful of the environement and socially responsible.

Great simple recipe! And thanks for noticing we have them at Greene Grape Provisions. Worth noting that our scallops are “dry” and the ones at Pathmark are likely “wet” and treated with sodium tripolyphosphate (“STP”). STP acts as a preservative and makes the scallop absorb additional water which makes it weigh more and also makes it harder to brown the scallops as this recipe requires. There’s a good explanation of the difference between dry and wet scallops here: http://www.finecooking.com/articles/dry-scallops-sear-better.aspx

Our scallops get to us within about 36 hours of coming off the boat and we don’t keep them in the case very long so there’s no need to treat them with anything to keep them around a long time.

Kudos to Catherine for owning up to the difficulties in serving sustainably caught fish.

I myself was vegan for 5 years, then decided to start eating eggs, cheese, and some seafood because of concern for protein intake. Lately, though, I’ve been avoiding seafood precisely because it is so difficult to find reliably sustainable catch. The NYTimes did a story a year or two back about how many vendors–restaurants like Ici, and markets–are misled and lied to by sellers trying to sell their product, with no concern for the origins or sustainability. I certainly don’t want to foster mistrust, but their study found Whole Foods in NYC was selling “wild” salmon that wasn’t so wild, and the store had no way to know. It was only through expensive lab tests that the paper was able to reveal that the fish was not actually wild.

For all the foodies out there, it’s difficult to say “I won’t eat that because of where it came from, even though it’s delicious.” Many hardcore foodies would never dream of such a statement. But the reality is, we must change our habits and our indulgences if we want future generations to enjoy them. I love sea scallops, but if indulging in them now will endanger them for the future, it becomes a rather selfish endeavor for me to do so.

It certainly is difficult to do the right thing, and I know the folks at both ICI and Stonehome are working hard to stick to their strong personal values about sustainability. I wish there were more restaurants I could trust as I do these two.

I buy only from the Blue Moon people at the Greenmarket, and they sell both skate and dogfish shark, which are listed on some lists but not others. It’s a small operation — I’m comfortable trusting them to do the right thing, as opposed to anything Whole Foods et al may be labeling as sustainable or wild.

Even the fish lists are tricky. I have the Seafood Watch iPhone app, but find the http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/fishwatch/about_us.htm#otherFAQs is better – more thorough and up to date. But I’d rather work with a fisher purveyor and restaurants that are already on the same wavelength about doing the right thing, which is more complicated than a palmcard from the MoBay.

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Get news about Fort Greene and Clinton Hill in our daily roundup, including the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s summer slate of youth-oriented programs and the third annual Art of Brooklyn Film Festival coming to St. Joseph’s College in Clinton Hill.

In today’s daily post, you’ll find news on the spring opening of the Fort Greene Artisan Market, a Pratt Institute student artwork display at a Gagosian Gallery in Manhattan and a new recording studio in the nabe.

In this crime report, locals told police that their belongings were stolen from cars and trucks, their homes were burglarized and their bank accounts were used in unauthorized ways. Also, disputes between significant others resulted in violence and robberies last week. The trend of robberies on the B38 bus continued last week, with another incident on May 4 marking the tenth such robbery in the precinct this year so far.

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